“After the start of the service a line-up of the people whom I had met at the funeral parlour got up to deliver eulogies. The minister, who turned out to be young, white and female, told a story about my brother. It appeared that he had been a regular church-goer, and they had shared several serious conversations about spiritual and social matters. He had often helped to entertain the children of the congregation, who had loved him, and the previous Easter he had taken part in a pageant in which he played the part of Jesus. His empathy with Christ’s suffering, the minister said, made him so convincing that he had moved all his young friends and several of the audience to tears. My jaw literally dropped open with amazement. As far as I knew, until he died, my brother had been a passionate believer in a complex blend of Marxism, pan-Africanism and various kinds of black nationalism. At the end of the 1960s the first notable public demonstration he had organized had been when he marched his band of Black Power followers into Manchester cathedral one Sunday, ordered the Dean out of the pulpit and delivered an oration about converting church property in the city for the use of poor black people. In the time we were together I had often heard him launch into bitterly humorous diatribes about White Christians like this American minister. During his last years in Britain his closest friend among British politicians had been Arthur Scargill. He had worked on the Yorkshire mines and often expressed his contempt for people who who came into politics with soft hands. In our last conversation he had exploded in rage when I used the term ‘black British’.”
13. A Funeral In Delaware
Mike Phillips - London Crossings: A Biography of Black Britain (2001)
